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Thursday, February 02, 2006

Islam's Fatal Misunderstanding

The West grew out of the competition of ideas flowing from its free speech. Many Muslims now seek to suppress free speech in Western societies to which they've voluntarily migrated or with which they trade. This is a fatal misunderstanding, since free speech is a core Western value - unlike dress for example - and the result will be less, not more, tolerance of Muslims.Muslim violence against the West in the Danish newspaper case provides a perfect example - here are two more from the hyper-tolerant UK.The politician who predicted the 7/7 bombings by second generation Muslims and was being tried for inciting race hatred has been acquitted by a jury:

The leader of the British National Party was today cleared of racial hatred charges stemming from a speech in which he claimed that Muslim teenagers were encouraged by the Koran to make white girls pregnant.

Nick Griffin, 45, was secretly filmed giving the speech to supporters during a rally in West Yorkshire in 2004. He also described Britain as a "multi-racial hellhole" and claimed Muslim violence would spread across the country.

Asked whether he would tone down his language in future, Griffin replied: "I don’t think so, no." He added that Islam and the values of western democracy were incompatible. "Are we going to become an Islamic republic or stay free, democratic, western and Christian?" he asked.

Quite. And here's what happened when Blair tried to pass a law to make it a criminal offense to criticize Islam (my ellipsis):

Tony Blair suffered a humiliating blow to his authority tonight as the Government slumped to a shock double defeat over its plans to combat religious hatred.

(Parliament) inflicted a series of defeats on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill in a bid to safeguard freedom of speech with an amendment restricting the new offense of inciting religious hatred threatening words and behaviour rather than a wider definition also covering insults and abuse.

They also required the offense to be intentional and specified that criticism,insult, abuse and ridicule of religion, belief or religious practice would not be an offense.

The defeat was supported by many Brit Muslims, and lawmakers from all parties, including Blair's own.Muslims should take careful note of the European support for the Danes and the Brit refusal to bend.